The Los Angeles Lakers suffered their fourth loss in five games, as the Detroit Pistons spoiled LeBron James‘ 41st birthday with a 128-106 win in L.A.
Detroit blew the game open in the fourth quarter, running away in the final 12 minutes to improve to 25-8 on the season. They did so by hounding the Lakers on defense, forcing 20 turnovers that turned into 30 Pistons points, and dominated at the rim, outscoring L.A. 74-44 in the paint.
Vibes for the Lakers are reaching a low point amid this recent swoon, and those frustrations only built late in the loss to Detroit. Coach JJ Redick pointed to the Lakers allowing the officiating to get to them, noting the team knew coming in the Pistons would commit a lot of fouls that would go uncalled but still let that bother them.
“I think there’s probably a level of frustration when you’re turning the ball over and you’re feeling like you’re getting fouled,” Redick said, via ESPN. . “There’s frustration there, for sure. But I mean, again, I said it even here, we said it this morning: They’re going to foul every possession. It’s just, you got to play through it.”
Luka Dončić committed eight of the Lakers’ turnovers and was visibly frustrated by the officiating during the game — although, it should be noted that’s seemingly the case every night. Afterwards, he said the Lakers need to learn how to match physicality when it becomes clear the officials will let more go in a given game.
“We’ve got to definitely match their physicality,” Doncic said. “That’s the whole point. We got to match how they play. You saw the refs let it go, so we should play [with] physicality, for sure.”
The best defensive teams in the league tend to get away with more physicality. However, it’s not because of officiating bias for that team — you’d have a hard time arguing the NBA would rather a team from Detroit or OKC beat the Lakers — but because being more physical with opponents doesn’t look like a foul when you’re constantly in the proper position. Fouls are far more likely to be obvious (and thus seen more often by refs) when you’re reaching and out of position.
Young, athletic teams that can consistently be in a legal guarding position get away with more contact because it’s less obvious at game speed. That’s the formula for the Pistons, Thunder, Spurs and others, and part of the problem for a team like the Lakers is that they can’t match the physicality of those teams as Dončić wants and get away with it because they don’t have the personnel to execute at that level defensively.
Thus, you get a frustrated Redick, who noted pregame that the Pistons will foul “three or four times” per possession, but insisted he wasn’t saying it in a negative way. That’s because he probably wishes he could have the Lakers deploy that kind of game plan, but the roster won’t allow it. As such, he’s left to complain about the officiating and the lack of calls, but every time the Lakers face one of those young, athletic, defensive-minded teams, they’re likely going to run into the same problems.